


High Frequency

by e_skah_pay



Category: The Penumbra Podcast, Under Pressure (Podcast), Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Everything takes place in the same universe, Gen, There is no plot, There is only Zach Valenti, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_skah_pay/pseuds/e_skah_pay
Summary: There is a voice that exists in multiple times. Multiple places. Under multiple names and with multiple personalities.Or: A progress report on Zach Valenti's quest to conquer every podcast ever written





	1. Goodbye Eiffel, Hello Jack

Goddard is everywhere on Earth. That’s just the way things are. From video game developers to cell phone designers to clean energy initiatives, everything can be traced back to Goddard Futuristics.

So, to a guy who’s spent the last few years locked inside a floating tin can with all the horrors Goddard could throw at him? Earth isn’t exactly a safe haven any more.

But it’s not like Doug Eiffel wants to spend any more time _off_ the planet’s surface, either.

So he goes off the grid. New names, new personalities. He hitchhikes to places where Goddard hasn’t quite reached yet. He hides in plain sight, working as a janitor across the street from the biggest Goddard firm on the Eastern Seaboard. It’s all paranoia, of course. Nobody’s looking for him, except maybe Minkowski. Lovelace might, but last he saw of her she was being taken for “processing”, or “re-integration”, or some other vaguely sinister-sounding process that was definitely code for something Eiffel doesn’t want to think about.

He can’t stop seeing her, when he closes his eyes. Walking calmly away to meet her fate. Side by side with Jacobi, who seemed to be the only one surprised that he’d been Changeling-ed, too. Neither of them fought it. By that point, they were just too tired to fight it any more. 

They all were.

So Eiffel looks forward, not back. He picks up new skills the way he picks up new names, new mannerisms, new backstories with just enough singularity to be plausible and just enough detail to be boring. A fry cook, a retail worker, a freelance photographer.

And then he gets the call. Something about a research vessel out in the middle of the ocean. Something about one of his old personas, one of the resumes he put out. Something about a project that doesn’t have “Goddard Futuristics” stamped on top of it in big block letters.

He doesn’t worry that his resume clearly wasn’t fact-checked. He doesn’t wonder why he, of all the mechanics-savvy people on this big green planet, was picked for the job. Instead, he brushes up on his Australian accent.

***

He goes by Jack, as in Jack-of-all-trades. No matter who he’s pretending to be today, he’s always going to think that’s funny. He’s launched into the ocean, sent God knows how far down, and dumped out into a tin can of a research station clinging desperately to the side of a trench wall.

It takes him longer than it should to trust all the people on the Amphitrite who’ve got a “Dr.” in front of their name. But Ramirez is a sweetheart, and Turin’s almost painfully human, and Petersen may be a little prickly but they’re certainly no Hilbert. As for Aspros? She might as well not even have a title, for all that Jack seems to acknowledge it.

(Eiffel can’t quite bring himself to call her “Captain”. Not when he’s thinking that this might have been what _his_ Captain was once like.)

(Not when he’s thinking that _his_ Captain is currently being poked and prodded and laid out under bright lights so all those greedy little Goddard scientists can see what she’s made of.)

And when a tiny little wide-eyed thing named Jamie gets dropped into a place she clearly doesn’t belong, and finds refuge from her terror in her - frankly, unscientific - audio notes? Something about that just strikes a chord in whatever part of Jack’s heart might still be Doug Eiffel.

He’s not flirting with her. Not really. But she’s allowed to think that if it gives him an excuse to hang around so much.

On the Amphitrite, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s day or night. Everything is regulated. Scheduled. Tasks are assigned and carried out - or not, if you’re good enough at slacking.

(Eiffel was a slacker. Jack is not.)

Outside the portholes is nothing but a crushing darkness. One breach in the hull, and everyone inside will die a horrible death. No rescue. No safety net. No escape.

It almost starts to feel like home.

And sometimes, when he’s the only one left awake, tinkering away at whatever pipe or tube or wire needs to be tinkered with today, he takes off his pendant. The one he’s been wearing for over two years. The only thing he managed to salvage from the Hephaestus before he got launched back to the planet he wasn’t sure he belonged on any more.

A tiny silver USB drive, hanging securely on the end of a simple metal chain. Scrawled on it in permanent marker are four letters.

_HERA._

He holds it in his hand. Finds the place in the circuitry where it would plug in.

And lets it fall back, unused, untested, under his shirt.

Right on top of his heart, where she belongs.

He wonders what would happen if he connected her to the station. He wonders if she’d like being the Amphitrite. He wonders, after all this time, if she liked being the Hephaestus. Did she feel a connection to the floating hunk of metal that served as, for lack of a better word, her body?

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. A sign, or a message, or a Force-ghost telling him to plug his goddamn best friend back in already. Whatever it is, it hasn’t come yet. He’s sure he’ll know when it does.

Until then, he tinkers. He laughs too loud, and sings off-key, and waits quietly for the day when he knows it's time.

He's sure it won't be long.

He's sure.


	2. A Light in the D'Arc-ness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome, Travellers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to tell me what Erin's son's actual name is, that'd be swell.
> 
> But hey, new Penumbra comes out tomorrow (!!!!!!!) so I'm sure I'll figure it out.

A thousand years later, Goddard is gone. The Earth is no longer green and blue. A thousand stations like the Hephaestus litter the sky, a thousand more like the Amphitrite fill the sea. The great cities of old are buried under salt and ash, but humanity remains the same.

Humanity’s soul is in the gutter.

Humanity starts to reach out toward the stars.

***

A thousand years more, and the Earth is habitable again. So is Mars. Pluto. Every moon of Jupiter. Humanity thrives.

And still, humanity’s greatest suffering is at its own hands. A war rages across the galaxy, so brutal that it doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t have a cause. Doesn’t have an end. In this time, humanity is not alone. They are being watched, observed. They’ve been under scrutiny for the past two thousand years.

They are being tested.

They are failing.

And then Erin Marshall D’Arc reaches out.

She’s looking for a refuge, a place where humanity can be what it was intended to be. In the midst of a war, under a city that oozes human corruption, Erin Marshall D’Arc creates a dome. Erin Marshall D’Arc becomes a legend, a myth. The Martian Atlantis - or El Dorado, depending on who you ask. A fairy tale blown out of proportion in order to cover up a bigger secret:

Erin Marshall D’Arc did not create that dome.

She did something far more legendary.

In the darkness of space, scanning for enemy messages she might be able to intercept and decode, D’Arc found something. Something being transmitted on a frequency that had long since fallen out of use.

Erin Marshall D’Arc found music. Symphonies and etudes and sonatas, all originating at a point nearly eight light-years away. A star with strange heat signatures. A star that, for as long as humans had been studying the sky, had been known as Wolf 359.

The star pulled her in - first metaphorically, and then literally. But D’Arc did not die. She survived, and then she lived. Erin Marshall D’Arc gave an immortal alien entity hope for the future of humanity. In return, the entity gave her something of their own. Something that could hold their secrets and share them with any other humans who proved themselves worthy.

What the entity gave to Erin Marshall D’Arc was nothing more and nothing less than a person. Flawed, spiteful, and more than ready to see the worst in the rest of its species. It was a person with a face, and a body, and a name. But most importantly, it was a person with a voice.

And just what voice does an immortal alien entity deem worthy to give to humanity’s last hope?

The one that taught his Dear Listeners how to sing.


End file.
